arXiv subjects

Katrien Verbert

Publications and source records attributed to Katrien Verbert.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Visual-Conversational Interface for Evidence-Based Explanation of Diabetes Risk Prediction

Healthcare professionals need effective ways to use, understand, and validate AI-driven clinical decision support systems. Existing systems face two key limitations: complex visualizations and a lack of grounding in scientific evidence. We present an integrated decision support system that combines interactive visualizations with a conversational agent to explain diabetes risk assessments. We propose a hybrid prompt handling approach combining fine-tuned language models for analytical queries with general Large Language Models (LLMs) for broader medical questions, a methodology for grounding AI explanations in scientific evidence, and a feature range analysis technique to support deeper understanding of feature contributions. We conducted a mixed-methods study with 30 healthcare professionals and found that the conversational interactions helped healthcare professionals build a clear understanding of model assessments, while the integration of scientific evidence calibrated trust in the system's decisions. Most participants reported that the system supported both patient risk evaluation and recommendation.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

A Systematic Review of User-Centred Evaluation of Explainable AI in Healthcare

Despite promising developments in Explainable Artificial Intelligence, the practical value of XAI methods remains under-explored and insufficiently validated in real-world settings. Robust and context-aware evaluation is essential, not only to produce understandable explanations but also to ensure their trustworthiness and usability for intended users, but tends to be overlooked because of no clear guidelines on how to design an evaluation with users. This study addresses this gap with two main goals: (1) to develop a framework of well-defined, atomic properties that characterise the user experience of XAI in healthcare; and (2) to provide clear, context-sensitive guidelines for defining evaluation strategies based on system characteristics. We conducted a systematic review of 82 user studies, sourced from five databases, all situated within healthcare settings and focused on evaluating AI-generated explanations. The analysis was guided by a predefined coding scheme informed by an existing evaluation framework, complemented by inductive codes developed iteratively. The review yields three key contributions: (1) a synthesis of current evaluation practices, highlighting a growing focus on human-centred approaches in healthcare XAI; (2) insights into the interrelations among explanation properties; and (3) an updated framework and a set of actionable guidelines to support interdisciplinary teams in designing and implementing effective evaluation strategies for XAI systems tailored to specific application contexts.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Let's Get You Hired: A Job Seeker's Perspective on Multi-Agent Recruitment Systems for Explaining Hiring Decisions

During job recruitment, traditional applicant selection methods often lack transparency. Candidates are rarely given sufficient justifications for recruiting decisions, whether they are made manually by human recruiters or through the use of black-box Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS). To address this problem, our work introduces a multi-agent AI system that uses Large Language Models (LLMs) to guide job seekers during the recruitment process. Using an iterative user-centric design approach, we first conducted a two-phased exploratory study with four active job seekers to inform the design and development of the system. Subsequently, we conducted an in-depth, qualitative user study with 20 active job seekers through individual one-to-one interviews to evaluate the developed prototype. The results of our evaluation demonstrate that participants perceived our multi-agent recruitment system as significantly more actionable, trustworthy, and fair compared to traditional methods. Our study further helped us uncover in-depth insights into factors contributing to these perceived user experiences. Drawing from these insights, we offer broader design implications for building user-aligned, multi-agent explainable AI systems across diverse domains.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Importance of User Control in Data-Centric Steering for Healthcare Experts

As Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into high-stakes domains like healthcare, effective collaboration between healthcare experts and AI systems is critical. Data-centric steering, which involves fine-tuning prediction models by improving training data quality, plays a key role in this process. However, little research has explored how varying levels of user control affect healthcare experts during data-centric steering. We address this gap by examining manual and automated steering approaches through a between-subjects, mixed-methods user study with 74 healthcare experts. Our findings show that manual steering, which grants direct control over training data, significantly improves model performance while maintaining trust and system understandability. Based on these findings, we propose design implications for a hybrid steering system that combines manual and automated approaches to increase user involvement during human-AI collaboration.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Show Me How: Benefits and Challenges of Agent-Augmented Counterfactual Explanations for Non-Expert Users

Counterfactual explanations offer actionable insights by illustrating how changes to inputs can lead to different outcomes. However, these explanations often suffer from ambiguity and impracticality, limiting their utility for non-expert users with limited AI knowledge. Augmenting counterfactual explanations with Large Language Models (LLMs) has been proposed as a solution, but little research has examined their benefits and challenges for non-experts. To address this gap, we developed a healthcare-focused system that leverages conversational AI agents to enhance counterfactual explanations, offering clear, actionable recommendations to help patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) reduce their risk. Evaluated through a mixed-methods study with 34 participants, our findings highlight the effectiveness of agent-augmented counterfactuals in improving actionable recommendations. Results further indicate that users with prior experience using conversational AI demonstrated greater effectiveness in utilising these explanations compared to novices. Furthermore, this paper introduces a set of generic guidelines for creating augmented counterfactual explanations, incorporating safeguards to mitigate common LLM pitfalls, such as hallucinations, and ensuring the explanations are both actionable and contextually relevant for non-expert users.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Explanatory Debiasing: Involving Domain Experts in the Data Generation Process to Mitigate Representation Bias in AI Systems

Representation bias is one of the most common types of biases in artificial intelligence (AI) systems, causing AI models to perform poorly on underrepresented data segments. Although AI practitioners use various methods to reduce representation bias, their effectiveness is often constrained by insufficient domain knowledge in the debiasing process. To address this gap, this paper introduces a set of generic design guidelines for effectively involving domain experts in representation debiasing. We instantiated our proposed guidelines in a healthcare-focused application and evaluated them through a comprehensive mixed-methods user study with 35 healthcare experts. Our findings show that involving domain experts can reduce representation bias without compromising model accuracy. Based on our findings, we also offer recommendations for developers to build robust debiasing systems guided by our generic design guidelines, ensuring more effective inclusion of domain experts in the debiasing process.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Designing Visual Explanations and Learner Controls to Engage Adolescents in AI-Supported Exercise Selection

E-learning platforms that personalise content selection with AI are often criticised for lacking transparency and controllability. Researchers have therefore proposed solutions such as open learner models and letting learners select from ranked recommendations, which engage learners before or after the AI-supported selection process. However, little research has explored how learners - especially adolescents - could engage during such AI-supported decision-making. To address this open challenge, we iteratively designed and implemented a control mechanism that enables learners to steer the difficulty of AI-compiled exercise series before practice, while interactively analysing their control's impact in a 'what-if' visualisation. We evaluated our prototypes through four qualitative studies involving adolescents, teachers, EdTech professionals, and pedagogical experts, focusing on different types of visual explanations for recommendations. Our findings suggest that 'why' explanations do not always meet the explainability needs of young learners but can benefit teachers. Additionally, 'what-if' explanations were well-received for their potential to boost motivation. Overall, our work illustrates how combining learner control and visual explanations can be operationalised on e-learning platforms for adolescents. Future research can build upon our designs for 'why' and 'what-if' explanations and verify our preliminary findings.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Petal-X: Human-Centered Visual Explanations to Improve Cardiovascular Risk Communication

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), the leading cause of death worldwide, can be prevented in most cases through behavioral interventions. Therefore, effective communication of CVD risk and projected risk reduction by risk factor modification plays a crucial role in reducing CVD risk at the individual level. However, despite interest in refining risk estimation with improved prediction models such as SCORE2, the guidelines for presenting these risk estimations in clinical practice remained essentially unchanged in the last few years, with graphical score charts (GSCs) continuing to be one of the prevalent systems. This work describes the design and implementation of Petal-X, a novel tool to support clinician-patient shared decision-making by explaining the CVD risk contributions of different factors and facilitating what-if analysis. Petal-X relies on a novel visualization, Petal Product Plots, and a tailor-made global surrogate model of SCORE2, whose fidelity is comparable to that of the GSCs used in clinical practice. We evaluated Petal-X compared to GSCs in a controlled experiment with 88 healthcare students, all but one with experience with chronic patients. The results show that Petal-X outperforms GSC in critical tasks, such as comparing the contribution to the patient's 10-year CVD risk of each modifiable risk factor, without a significant loss of perceived transparency, trust, or intent to use. Our study provides an innovative approach to the visualization and explanation of risk in clinical practice that, due to its model-agnostic nature, could continue to support next-generation artificial intelligence risk assessment models.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

An Explanatory Model Steering System for Collaboration between Domain Experts and AI

With the increasing adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems in high-stake domains, such as healthcare, effective collaboration between domain experts and AI is imperative. To facilitate effective collaboration between domain experts and AI systems, we introduce an Explanatory Model Steering system that allows domain experts to steer prediction models using their domain knowledge. The system includes an explanation dashboard that combines different types of data-centric and model-centric explanations and allows prediction models to be steered through manual and automated data configuration approaches. It allows domain experts to apply their prior knowledge for configuring the underlying training data and refining prediction models. Additionally, our model steering system has been evaluated for a healthcare-focused scenario with 174 healthcare experts through three extensive user studies. Our findings highlight the importance of involving domain experts during model steering, ultimately leading to improved human-AI collaboration.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Representation Debiasing of Generated Data Involving Domain Experts

Biases in Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) systems due to skewed datasets problematise the application of prediction models in practice. Representation bias is a prevalent form of bias found in the majority of datasets. This bias arises when training data inadequately represents certain segments of the data space, resulting in poor generalisation of prediction models. Despite AI practitioners employing various methods to mitigate representation bias, their effectiveness is often limited due to a lack of thorough domain knowledge. To address this limitation, this paper introduces human-in-the-loop interaction approaches for representation debiasing of generated data involving domain experts. Our work advocates for a controlled data generation process involving domain experts to effectively mitigate the effects of representation bias. We argue that domain experts can leverage their expertise to assess how representation bias affects prediction models. Moreover, our interaction approaches can facilitate domain experts in steering data augmentation algorithms to produce debiased augmented data and validate or refine the generated samples to reduce representation bias. We also discuss how these approaches can be leveraged for designing and developing user-centred AI systems to mitigate the impact of representation bias through effective collaboration between domain experts and AI.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Lessons Learned from EXMOS User Studies: A Technical Report Summarizing Key Takeaways from User Studies Conducted to Evaluate The EXMOS Platform

In the realm of interactive machine-learning systems, the provision of explanations serves as a vital aid in the processes of debugging and enhancing prediction models. However, the extent to which various global model-centric and data-centric explanations can effectively assist domain experts in detecting and resolving potential data-related issues for the purpose of model improvement has remained largely unexplored. In this technical report, we summarise the key findings of our two user studies. Our research involved a comprehensive examination of the impact of global explanations rooted in both data-centric and model-centric perspectives within systems designed to support healthcare experts in optimising machine learning models through both automated and manual data configurations. To empirically investigate these dynamics, we conducted two user studies, comprising quantitative analysis involving a sample size of 70 healthcare experts and qualitative assessments involving 30 healthcare experts. These studies were aimed at illuminating the influence of different explanation types on three key dimensions: trust, understandability, and model improvement. Results show that global model-centric explanations alone are insufficient for effectively guiding users during the intricate process of data configuration. In contrast, data-centric explanations exhibited their potential by enhancing the understanding of system changes that occur post-configuration. However, a combination of both showed the highest level of efficacy for fostering trust, improving understandability, and facilitating model enhancement among healthcare experts. We also present essential implications for developing interactive machine-learning systems driven by explanations. These insights can guide the creation of more effective systems that empower domain experts to harness the full potential of machine learning

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

EXMOS: Explanatory Model Steering Through Multifaceted Explanations and Data Configurations

Explanations in interactive machine-learning systems facilitate debugging and improving prediction models. However, the effectiveness of various global model-centric and data-centric explanations in aiding domain experts to detect and resolve potential data issues for model improvement remains unexplored. This research investigates the influence of data-centric and model-centric global explanations in systems that support healthcare experts in optimising models through automated and manual data configurations. We conducted quantitative (n=70) and qualitative (n=30) studies with healthcare experts to explore the impact of different explanations on trust, understandability and model improvement. Our results reveal the insufficiency of global model-centric explanations for guiding users during data configuration. Although data-centric explanations enhanced understanding of post-configuration system changes, a hybrid fusion of both explanation types demonstrated the highest effectiveness. Based on our study results, we also present design implications for effective explanation-driven interactive machine-learning systems.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2023

Towards a Comprehensive Human-Centred Evaluation Framework for Explainable AI

While research on explainable AI (XAI) is booming and explanation techniques have proven promising in many application domains, standardised human-centred evaluation procedures are still missing. In addition, current evaluation procedures do not assess XAI methods holistically in the sense that they do not treat explanations' effects on humans as a complex user experience. To tackle this challenge, we propose to adapt the User-Centric Evaluation Framework used in recommender systems: we integrate explanation aspects, summarise explanation properties, indicate relations between them, and categorise metrics that measure these properties. With this comprehensive evaluation framework, we hope to contribute to the human-centred standardisation of XAI evaluation.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

Steering Recommendations and Visualising Its Impact: Effects on Adolescents' Trust in E-Learning Platforms

Researchers have widely acknowledged the potential of control mechanisms with which end-users of recommender systems can better tailor recommendations. However, few e-learning environments so far incorporate such mechanisms, for example for steering recommended exercises. In addition, studies with adolescents in this context are rare. To address these limitations, we designed a control mechanism and a visualisation of the control's impact through an iterative design process with adolescents and teachers. Then, we investigated how these functionalities affect adolescents' trust in an e-learning platform that recommends maths exercises. A randomised controlled experiment with 76 middle school and high school adolescents showed that visualising the impact of exercised control significantly increases trust. Furthermore, having control over their mastery level seemed to inspire adolescents to reasonably challenge themselves and reflect upon the underlying recommendation algorithm. Finally, a significant increase in perceived transparency suggested that visualising steering actions can indirectly explain why recommendations are suitable, which opens interesting research tracks for the broader field of explainable AI.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

Directive Explanations for Monitoring the Risk of Diabetes Onset: Introducing Directive Data-Centric Explanations and Combinations to Support What-If Explorations

Explainable artificial intelligence is increasingly used in machine learning (ML) based decision-making systems in healthcare. However, little research has compared the utility of different explanation methods in guiding healthcare experts for patient care. Moreover, it is unclear how useful, understandable, actionable and trustworthy these methods are for healthcare experts, as they often require technical ML knowledge. This paper presents an explanation dashboard that predicts the risk of diabetes onset and explains those predictions with data-centric, feature-importance, and example-based explanations. We designed an interactive dashboard to assist healthcare experts, such as nurses and physicians, in monitoring the risk of diabetes onset and recommending measures to minimize risk. We conducted a qualitative study with 11 healthcare experts and a mixed-methods study with 45 healthcare experts and 51 diabetic patients to compare the different explanation methods in our dashboard in terms of understandability, usefulness, actionability, and trust. Results indicate that our participants preferred our representation of data-centric explanations that provide local explanations with a global overview over other methods. Therefore, this paper highlights the importance of visually directive data-centric explanation method for assisting healthcare experts to gain actionable insights from patient health records. Furthermore, we share our design implications for tailoring the visual representation of different explanation methods for healthcare experts.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2022

Perceptual Effects of Hierarchy in Art Historical Social Networks

Network representation is a crucial topic in historical social network analysis. The debate around their value and connotations, led by humanist scholars, is today more relevant than ever, seeing how common these representations are as support for historical analysis. Force-directed networks, in particular, are popular as they can be developed relatively quickly, and reveal patterns and structures in data. The underlying algorithms, although powerful in revealing hidden patterns, do not retain meaningful structure and existing hierarchies within historical social networks. In this article, we question the foreign aspect of this structure that force-directed layout create in historical datasets. We explore the importance of hierarchy in social networks, and investigate whether hierarchies -- strongly present within our models of social structure -- affect our perception of social network data. Results from our user evaluation indicate that hierarchical network representations reduce cognitive load and leads to more frequent and deeper insights into historical social networks. We also find that users report a preference for the hierarchical graph representation. We analyse these findings in light of the broader discussion on the value of force-directed network representations within humanistic research, and introduce open questions for future work in this line of research.

cs.SI↗

arXiv2021

AHMoSe: A Knowledge-Based Visual Support System for Selecting Regression Machine Learning Models

Decision support systems have become increasingly popular in the domain of agriculture. With the development of automated machine learning, agricultural experts are now able to train, evaluate and make predictions using cutting edge machine learning (ML) models without the need for much ML knowledge. Although this automated approach has led to successful results in many scenarios, in certain cases (e.g., when few labeled datasets are available) choosing among different models with similar performance metrics is a difficult task. Furthermore, these systems do not commonly allow users to incorporate their domain knowledge that could facilitate the task of model selection, and to gain insight into the prediction system for eventual decision making. To address these issues, in this paper we present AHMoSe, a visual support system that allows domain experts to better understand, diagnose and compare different regression models, primarily by enriching model-agnostic explanations with domain knowledge. To validate AHMoSe, we describe a use case scenario in the viticulture domain, grape quality prediction, where the system enables users to diagnose and select prediction models that perform better. We also discuss feedback concerning the design of the tool from both ML and viticulture experts.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2021

Trust in Prediction Models: a Mixed-Methods Pilot Study on the Impact of Domain Expertise

People's trust in prediction models can be affected by many factors, including domain expertise like knowledge about the application domain and experience with predictive modelling. However, to what extent and why domain expertise impacts people's trust is not entirely clear. In addition, accurately measuring people's trust remains challenging. We share our results and experiences of an exploratory pilot study in which four people experienced with predictive modelling systematically explore a visual analytics system with an unknown prediction model. Through a mixed-methods approach involving Likert-type questions and a semi-structured interview, we investigate how people's trust evolves during their exploration, and we distil six themes that affect their trust in the prediction model. Our results underline the multi-faceted nature of trust, and suggest that domain expertise alone cannot fully predict people's trust perceptions.

cs.HC↗